Blog

B-sm@rk, an Irish-Italian company based in Dublin and specialized in destination research and marketing, is starting a new research project about the capital city of Bulgaria, Sofia, with a program called Destination Personality, in which the firm has much experience. The idea of this project was born via a collaboration between the company and a soon-to-be graduate at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Jasmin Arifi, studying Economics and Management, and now intern at b-sm@rk. It will be realized with the collaboration of local partners. The project aims at analyzing the perception that tourists in Sofia have of the city, before, during, or after their tours, alongside a general study of tourism in Sofia. The Destination Personality concept uses a method ...

As we can see from the literature and the articles regarding Chinese tourism, Chinese tourists are becoming more and more aware of which are their needs and desires. Nowadays, their tastes have changed; they are satisfied no more with just a blitz group tour of all the European capitals, with a Chinese tour guide and Chinese tailored services. They want to taste the real tourist location with its real food and culture. They want to explore and have new experiences. They are becoming more and more independent travellers, more and more similar to the “seasoned western travellers” we are used to (Z_punkt The Foresight Company, TUI Think Tank. 2017). This is the reason why Chinese tourists have the same needs ...

In the recent months, we focused our attention on the travel market because we believe our efforts and researches in Brand and Destination Personality could become useful in order to increase the travel experience. As Svetlana Masjutina pointed out in one of her latest article published on LinkedIn, the phenomenon of globalization and the ease of the outbound tourism all over the world have led several benefits for local economies. On the other hand, we have to consider that mass tourism is not all for good and it brings with it several concerns about the real experience that a tourist can have. In the fast growing tourism culture we have nowadays, we are inclined to visit as many places as we can ...

Despite Northern Ireland and Ireland belong to the same Island there are some interesting perception differences when we talk about destination. We have observed in a new research how their main touristic attractions looks in terms of #DestinationPersonality. The main destinations that we’ve considered are Giant’s Causeway and Belfast for Northern Ireland, Cliffs of Moher and Dublin for Ireland. In this way, we balanced the naturalistic and the urban aspect of the two countries. We started analysing the travel motivations and we noticed some differences in the tourists’ response; we asked them to rate the four locations according to four factors: “Culture”, “Pleasure”, “Relaxation”, “Sport”. Belfast and Giant’s Causeway have the highest values concerning the cultural factor.Both the Cliffs ...

The European Travel Commission has recently published its report about travel Trends and Performances, you can read the entire document here. As mentioned in the report Europe has experienced a rapid growth in term of arrivals, especially from foreign tourists. Focus Ireland Between January and May in Ireland, the International Arrivals are increased 2% compared to the same period of the previous year. This number seems encouraging but is one of the worst performances throughout all the country analysed. Focus China Recently here at b-smark we concentrate our efforts focusing on the Chinese outbound tourism in Ireland. In the European report, we can see how this topic is very hot in the travel market. Chinese are started to travel ...

Since 2011, B-sm@rk, an Italian-Irish company has been developing research and technology based on consumer behaviour and marketing automation for travel, hospitality and brands. Through MySmark, a customer experience platform, the company provides research and digital marketing tools for online travel and commerce. The cornerstones of the company are the Brand and Destination Personality (BP and DP) tools and researches. The personality of a brand or a destination is identified by a set of human characteristics associated with that brand or destination (This concept is more and more important in marketing since, as we all well know emotions matters). The concept serves as a connector between tourists, travel brands and places. It can be used to improve the customer experience ...

In the recent years, Dublin has attracted a lot of companies and start-ups. The entrepreneur environment, especially in the tech market, is now more active than ever and one of the hottest topics is the Mysmark one! That is developing new technologies for travel market. This topic, the Irish TravelTech, has been the subject of a recent work provided by TechIrelad, a no profit organization whose mission is providing data and insights on product innovation in Ireland. In this podcast you can listen an interesting interview with Mark Lenahan focusing on the data collected in Ireland about the number of employees in the High tech travel market, the most interesting travel start up and the total amount of funds. ...

Burano and its colorful houses, Murano and its antique art of glass, Lido and its International Film Festival… Each island somehow contributes to the uniqueness and magnificence of Venetian territories. Although rich of history and tradition, Venice islands are not enough valued and promoted, and the paradoxical touristic overcrowding of Venice city center versus the scarce flow of visits suffered by the islands is the proof of that. An experimental research has been conducted this year by b-sm@rk, an Italo-Irish company specialized in digital marketing, following a proposal from an intern native from Pellestrina who wanted to identify the main reasons of this circumstance. During this study, a sample of five significative islands (Burano, Murano, Pellestrina, Giudecca and Lido) has ...

The numbers of Chinese tourists in the world is growing at an amazing pace. Approximately 135 million outbound trips have been ventured by Chinese travellers in 2016, a number set to grow rapidly, reaching 200 million outbound trips in 2020. The size of the Chinese middle class has risen steadily with the rise in average income. Per capita GDP has increased by 148% in the last ten years: between 2003 and 2013 it grew at an average annual rate of 5.5%. Moreover, Oxford Economics predicts that by the year 2023 there will be another 61 million families who will be able to afford international travel by strengthening China’s role as the main market for international tourism. The flow trend of ...

Everything started with a collaboration among Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice) and b-sm@rk (Italo-Irish marketing company). Thanks to trust and teamwork, always present in this market research project, here we are with interesting and catching news. Sounds exciting? Keep reading! First of all, a survey is not such if we do not have human contribution. So, we start thanking everyone who has dedicated some of his/her precious time to complete the questionnaire, helping us in our innovative research. You are the main actors in this play, and you represent all PGC visitors! So let’s start form you, let’s start from the description of our international sample. This may not be surprising news if you have already ...

We use cookies as described in the Privacy Policy page. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. See the Privacy Policy page for instructions on how to disable any class of non-functional cookies.OkPrivacy policy